


Introitus

by acetheticallyy (jacquesdernier)



Series: the requiem in d minor [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, M/M, Metaphors, Other: See Story Notes, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquesdernier/pseuds/acetheticallyy
Summary: You tell him you love him near constantly, and the first time you did, after a month and a half of muddling around trying to learn the steps to a dance that neither of you were given any instruction for, you think he may very nearly have propelled you back into life again.





	Introitus

**Author's Note:**

> I’m just here to deliver on bad, semi-visible puns and surface level musical analysis.
> 
> this is part one of a new series I'm working on, all based on the entirety of mozart's requiem. one fic per movement, lengths may vary, angst/suffering free. I'm just a sap who wanted to make a joke about a skeleton-man grim reaper and his boyfriend via my favorite piece of classical music. this in particular was very fun to write bc I wanted to write sort of a dichotomy between the two and how they have different approaches to their feelings and how that like.......translates into each of them being freer with affection in certain places than others.
> 
> this has yet to be edited so all mistakes are mine and will also be fixed in due time, please only alert me of errors if they like compromise the integrity of the fic. enjoy!

Neither of you quite knows how to deal with this whole song and dance—the steps are much more complicated than either of you had likely anticipated. It was to be expected, you supposed, that this would be the case. There wasn’t really a lot of time for romance and dating and the like when a full one hundred years of dying and coming back and dying again (and then _finally_ making the cycle stop after nearly being swallowed into yet another horrible rendition of The End of The World) kept getting in the way of making anything of the sort happen. And you, well…you’ve been dead for longer than you can keep track of. There’s not a very big market for love when you are fully capable of just melting into a skeleton at a moment’s notice. Even though, some might say, it _is_ one of your greatest assets.

You aren’t going to go into detail on how, exactly, that particular conversation came about, and you _certainly_ aren’t going to go into detail on how it ended, but suffice it to say that there was a lot of stuttering and awkward laughter involved on your part, and it left you feeling warmer than you ever even had while you were alive. Not that the details are at all scandalous, mostly just embarrassing.

So it starts slow, and that suits you. It suits him a little less, you think, at least at first, before you are really able to understand who he _is_ , not as a public figure but as a person. It takes a while to get there, but you have the time. It’s not like you’ve really planned on going anywhere. If you’re being honest with yourself, you hadn’t planned on going anywhere since the day you met him.

You get close to telling him that, once or twice in the beginning, on the days where you both are a little worse for the wear, but you figure it must be a little too much a little too fast. You barely know each other then, even if you both might know a little more than you normally would about someone at that point in a relationship.

It’s tentative. At times, it’s explosive. Sometimes that’s good, and sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes it’s days spent laughing at nothing in the kitchen, trying to dodge an elbow thrown halfheartedly into your side when you insist that _yes, darling, I_ can _feel how cold I am, that’s why I_ have _to hold you this closely and yes, I am sorry that I’m getting in the way, but you wouldn’t want me to_ freeze _would you_ , an ache in your chest when he scoffs but settles deeper into your grasp anyway, wondering how much is too much, wondering how much you can say and how much you can do before one or both of you retreats.

Sometimes it is days that seem muted and dull, as if you are viewing them in sepia tones, as the tension builds up high around you and you’re glad that you technically don’t _have_ to breathe, or else you’d feel like you were about to choke on it. Days where neither of you sleeps at night because he can’t stop dreaming and you can’t stop worrying. Days where he gets up way too early and his smile strains on his face while your chest strains in rhythm. Days where you have to leave because he insists that _yeah, my dude, I’m fine, why don’t you go get out of the house for a while, you’re probably tired of putting up with my dramatic ass all the time_ , and you have to pretend that you’re okay with it because you still aren’t sure how much is allowed.

It’s a strange dance. Sometimes you feel like you’re moving at double speed while he’s just a couple beats off tempo. Like you’re trying to impress everyone with how well you know all of the steps, even while you’re stepping on your dance partner’s toes. Like he’s trying to prove that he knows the routine well enough to not screw it up, even if it means he’s a little bit behind the music. Even if it means he stumbles because his partner is already a few steps ahead.

You wouldn’t give it up for anything.

You’ve gotten to the point where you think that he wouldn’t, either, if the way he’s started to pull you closer to him in the middle of the night is any indication, when the dreams that are impossible to distinguish either as memory or as fear get to be too much to handle.

Things get softer, smoother. You’re in sync more often than not, and it’s easier to brush past the days when you aren’t.

You never really held back before, not where it mattered, but you give yourself more freely now. Soft reassurances fall from your lips with little hesitation, more comfortable now with where the lines in your relationship are drawn—more comfortable with pushing on the boundaries to see where they have a little give, to see where they will rearrange and disappear and turn into something softer.

You tell him you love him near constantly, and the first time you did, after a month and a half of muddling around trying to learn the steps to a dance that neither of you were given any instruction for, you think he may very nearly have propelled you back into life again.

It was an accident, which you’ll never admit to, but you really didn’t mean to say it. It was one of the Good-Explosive days, when everything was bright and loud and he had to fight laughter as he told you some of his—what you would consider more embarrassing but what he just considers more _exciting, babe, come on, Taako doesn’t do embarrassed_ —stories during his time stuck in a one hundred year-long repeating time loop. He couldn’t stop giggling at the memory of his friends getting stuck in a different plane because _somehow_ they managed to pull off some sort of feat that made the people in this little town in the middle of nowhere _convinced_ that Merle and Magnus just _had_ to be Gods and the people wouldn’t let either of them leave for fear of imminent, natural disaster, and you couldn’t stop smiling at the obvious joy and affection written all over his face.

You just said it. No forethought, no conscious decision, it just came out. _I love you_. You may not have even noticed, if it weren’t for how he suddenly started stumbling over words before just cutting himself off altogether. You watched as his eyes went wide and his mouth flopped open, and you may have gotten up and started running right then and there if it weren’t for the barely-there flush that started steadily creeping up the deep olive skin of his neck. Steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the heat flooding his cheeks, he had twisted his mouth to the side—presumably to fight back the shy grin that you could tell was threatening to take over his face—and said “well, uh. Well of course you do, my dude, it’s me, who wouldn’t,” after a few false starts where he had kept clearing his throat to avoid sounding too eager, too hopeful, too excited.

It was the response you had come to expect, after spending so much time with him—after spending so much time _loving_ him. It made you ache in the best possible way, even as he had collected himself and restarted his storytelling anew. You didn’t mind much that he hadn’t responded in kind, not when the way he pressed himself closer to you on the couch and kept your hand tightly intertwined with his own was confirmation enough.

Not when later, dozing off in the bedroom, moonlight streaming through the windows—so softly you might have missed it if he didn’t already have all of your attention—he whispered “me too, babe.”


End file.
